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Summary: if you want to [understand how to] build
robust, useful, attractive websites, this is the
book for you.

There's much more to Greenspun's work than
Dilbert/Dogbert's recycled truisms; don't compare them just because
Greenspun's writing is witty and often very amusing. The difference is that Greenspun's book has *content*: real, useful, and very-well
presented (and yes, the humor does help).

In a the Web's mediascape full of hype, punditry,
and PR writing passing itself as technical content, Greenspun's book is welcome relief. This
guy is a practical problem solver who retains the
sense of technical elegance often confined to
"academic" (not necessarily university!) environments. He tells us how to build production
systems with existing technology, but he does not
mince words about the dismal state-of-the-art.

The book covers from the nitty gritty but crucial
detail of avoiding unix process forks to the clear but evidently (look around at the web...

Thoreau would have smiled at Phil's comments, and I mean this as a compliment. A crucial point for further reflection here is
the distinction between individuals and corporations (for these purposes nonprofits also count). Phil comes close when he says
that corporations have no soul -or psique. The missing corollary
is that not being real persons, corporations should not be treated as such; sadly, our legal framework accords them rights which work reasonably
for individuals with limited resources and lifetimes (most persons), but
become a mockery in the hands of large organizations, for which devoting just some of their resources to manipulate the system becomes feasible on a routine basis. It is illuminating to realize that this
was not always so: a mere century and a half ago (in the US, double
that time in the UK, where the concept of corporation was born), corporations were given very stringent charters, had limited lifeti...